Autoconf

Table of Contents

Autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that produce shell
scripts to automatically configure software source code packages.
These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like
systems without manual user intervention. Autoconf creates a
configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the
operating system features that the package can use, in the form of M4
macro calls.

Producing configuration scripts using Autoconf
requires GNU M4. You should
install GNU M4 (at least version 1.4.6, although 1.4.13 or later is
recommended) before configuring Autoconf,
so that Autoconf's configure script can find it. The configuration
scripts produced by Autoconf are self-contained, so their users do not
need to have Autoconf (or GNU M4).

Autoconf documentation can be found in several formats at
http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/.
You may also find more information about Autoconf by looking at your
local documentation. For example, you might try looking in
/usr/share/doc/autoconf/, or use info autoconf at the shell
prompt.

Please remember that development of GNU Autoconf is a volunteer effort, and
you can also contribute to its development. For information about
contributing to the GNU Project, please read How to
help GNU.

If you have a patch for a bug in Autoconf that hasn't yet been fixed
in the latest git sources of Autoconf, please send the patch (made for
the git sources, not the release sources) to
<autoconf-patches@gnu.org>(archives).

You can subscribe to any GNU mailing list via the web as described
below. Or you can send an empty mail with a Subject: header line of
just "subscribe" to the relevant -request list. For example, to
subscribe yourself to the bug-autoconf list, you would
send mail to <bug-autoconf-request@gnu.org>
with no body and a Subject: header line of just "subscribe".

It has been necessary to moderate the GNU Autoconf mailing lists to
prevent the flood of spam. Postings to the lists are held for release by
the list moderator. Sometimes the moderators are unavailable for
brief periods of time. Please be patient when posting. If you
don't see the message in the list archive then it did not get posted.

Announcements

The low-volume mailing list
autotools-announce contains all announcements about Autoconf and a
few other related projects. Important announcements about Autoconf and
most other GNU Software in general are also made on the
info-gnu list.

If you think you have found a bug in GNU Autoconf, then please send as
complete a report as possible to
<bug-autoconf@gnu.org>. An easy way to collect all the
required information, such as platform and compiler, is to
run make check, and include the resulting
file tests/testsuite.log to your report. Disagreements
between the manual and the code are also bugs.